Just a Little Mad
by SCWLC
Summary: Luckily for Stephen, Connor is more than what he seems.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Just a Little Mad  
Author: SCWLC  
Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.  
Rating: PG  
Summary: Luckily for Stephen, Connor is more than what he seems.  
Notes: So, I once wrote a little Alice and Primeval crossover on Primeval Denial, then was inspired to write this. It is a Stephen dying in S2 fixit. This does directly connect with the Alice 2009 storyline, so pardon my novelisation. Spelling varies a little once Alice comes into it because I write American for her PoV and try to pretend I can write like a Brit (which I can't) for everyone else. I also don't know if I got the hospital name right, I tried with the help of Wikipedia. Shame on me. I think that's everything.

* * *

_He still couldn't believe it. His twin, his other half, gone. Not just missing, but . . . he couldn't think the word. Their parents were gone too, taken by that damned bitch, and that hurt only a little less than losing his brother. Just one moment more and he'd shove it all away inside where no one else could see it._

_Connor Hatter squared his shoulders and walked into the Oyster school in front of him._

_David Hatter took a deep breath and walked into the tea shop._

* * *

Connor ran down the hall, hoping to catch up to Stephen and Cutter, hoping he might be able to help with whatever it was that Helen and Leek had done. Suddenly he could hear Cutter shouting, voice wracked with emotion and desperate. "Stephen! Open the door! Get out of there! Stephen!"

The last turn and it was a long hallway. He could see Cutter pounding on the door.

Faintly he heard Stephen's voice, still confident and calm, through the door. "Tell Connor and Abby to stay out of trouble."

Connor redoubled his speed. That sounded like a goodbye. He wasn't going to let anyone else go. Not if he could help it.

"Stephen!" Cutter's voice was agonised.

One of the reasons Connor had fled to the Oyster world was that his gift was rabbit holes. What could the queen have done with a constant and ready source of rabbit holes? He didn't want to know. He didn't want to know what she'd have done to him, either. On Earth, the Oyster world, they were a bit wonky, but for something fast and short, say, taking him through a door, that he could do without trouble.

Between one pound on the door and the next, Connor slapped a portal onto the door in front of him, dashing through and letting it close up behind him. He barely checked at the sight of all the predators Leek had shown them, instead running at Stephen, whose eyes went wide in shock. Oysters did things to his rabbit holes, and on Earth it was even worse. He might've got Stephen through a quick, door's width sort of rabbit hole, but they weren't close enough to reach the door, not with the animals.

Connor saw his options in a second, he didn't know how thick the wall was, and more than six centimetres was asking for trouble up there. But there was a different route he could take. It would be a risk, but at least he could manoeuvre there and probably get Stephen home again safe. Most of all, they couldn't stay. It was like being in a cage of jabberwocky.

He hit Stephen, a picture-perfect tackle, and opened the rabbit hole behind the tracker. They toppled through, Connor clinging to Stephen like a limpet, feeling his own portal, really wonky at the Earth end of things, trying to rip Stephen away from him. If he wasn't careful, didn't hold on tightly, he might lose Stephen, and he couldn't risk that. The usual clocks and teacups, hats and random assortment of letters and numbers, playing cards and all sorts of weird, random things spun past. Connor had suspected for years that the reason you saw those things in the rabbit hole was because the human mind couldn't properly see the warping of space-time, and like the anomalies that presented as a glow and shattered glass, a rabbit hole meant your mind filled in the blanks with random bits of things.

The further they got from Earth, the more the rabbit hole seemed like a Tim Burton film gone wrong, and the less it seemed a chaotic skirl of energy in a vaguely tube-like shape.

With a sudden thump they were clear and dropped off on the City's streets.

"What the hell just happened?" Stephen asked, staring around at the dilapidated buildings before slamming himself to a wall away from the edge of the sidewalk. "Where are we?"

Connor sighed, then said, "It'd take a bit to explain, but as it's not safe out here, can we try to get someplace safe-ish and then I'll explain everything?"

"What do you-" Stephen was cut off as the teahead in the nearby doorway lurched out at them, mumbling something about a shot of serenity and ecstasy. Habits long-unused came roaring back, and Connor pulled Stephen aside, letting the ragged addict stumble past, then cracked a rabbit hole open in a wall in front of the man, sending him off to a spot a few flights up and east from there.

"Come on," Connor said, grabbing Stephen's arm and towing him away. "I shouldn'ta done that, it'll probably bring March down on us, and we don't want to be here when he gets here. We're all a little mad, but he's madder'n most and not in the good way either."

They hurried down the stairs, heading for the lakeshore in record time while Connor kept an eye out for a good bolthole. If he was to get them home, at all, he needed the time and space to concentrate on opening up the rabbit hole just right. The Mirror was too much of a risk, after all. It belonged to the Queen. Before they got there, though, he saw it. A tea shop, the door cracked, windows shattered and what looked like the contents had been tossed in search of something. The LED sign over the door still flashed that it was a teashop, but no one in their right minds would look this one over for anything, not after it'd been raided by the Queen's suits.

But that suited Connor just fine. No one would be back through in the near future, so it'd offer up a safe place to stay. He led Stephen inside, well aware that Stephen clearly thought he'd run mad going into a place like this, but they needed someplace they wouldn't get bothered at. Slipping along, he started at the sight of a familiar dozing face. "Dormie?"

"Wha . . . Hatter? That you?" Dormie started awake, blinking muzzily. "Thought March'd maybe got you."

Snorting, Connor told him, "That'd be the day. March get me, get any of us? Right."

"Looks like you had to do more'n usual to give him the slip," Dormie said, a pointed eye running over the clothes that were only a little like what he'd once worn when the Hatter family had all lived together.

Connor gave him a wry smile. "Needs must, Dormie. The upstairs still in one piece?"

"They wrecked the grass, Hatter, and all the tea's been lost, but it's not much worse than the first time we fixed it up."

Nodding, Connor just turned and trotted up the stairs. He wondered who Dormie's partner was, but decided that, ultimately, it didn't matter. Once upstairs he found an office, Wonderland style. A once-gorgeous green lawn was there, an office chair and desk, and Connor made a beeline for the wardrobe at the back. There it was. Hats and a few jackets. Something enough to camouflage Stephen's far less flamboyant style. "I assume we're 'safe-ish' here?" Stephen asked. "Because I think you owe me an explanation."

* * *

It had been a supremely weird day and it was just getting weirder. Not half an hour ago Stephen had been about to die at the claws and teeth of a bunch of predators from across the millennia, and now he was in a wrecked tea shop of some kind, after hurtling through an anomaly unlike any other he'd seen before. An anomaly that Connor seemed to have some sort of control over. He looked expectantly at his teammate, but Connor shook his head. "You're right. I'm just . . . I'm not sure you'll believe me, and if you go runnin' off around here the suits'll catch you, and I can't even begin to figure out how I'd get you out of the Queen's casino."

"Connor," Stephen said warningly. "That's not clearing anything up."

"Right. Erm . . . so . . . this is going to sound like a non sequitur, but you know how Cutter'd never have believed it was time travel that put the anomalous animals into the fossil record if he hadn't seen the anomalies?"

"Yes," Stephen said slowly. "Are you saying this is a similar sort of unbelievability?" He had already suspected it would be something completely insane, Connor's hesitant beginnings of an explanation confirmed it.

"Pretty much," Connor said. "You see . . . the books, _Alice in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_, they're not real, but they're based on something real."

"Here," Stephen said, eyes narrowed. "This place is . . . what? The place Wonderland is based on?"

Nodding, Connor told him, "I mean, it, here, it's called Wonderland, but it's not some kid's story. Not to mention that it's been a hundred and fifty years since Alice came in through the rabbit hole and the looking glass." Connor had a wistful smile was on his face as he said, "My great-great granddad helped her bring the whole deck of cards down at the time."

"The man downstairs, he called you, Hatter," Stephen said, frowning. "As in the Mad Hatter?"

Connor laughed. "We're all a little mad here, it's sort of the Wonderland motto, really, but he was a bit of a strange one, it's true." He shook his head before plopping into the chair. "But Hatter's a family name. It had some prominence for the association with Alice and all." His amusement faded. "That . . . that got us all into trouble in the end."

"How come?" Stephen asked.

The geek flinched, then seemed to shove whatever it was that was upsetting him away, and said, "Doesn't really matter." He shook it off, giving a good try at pretending he was unaffected. "Anyhow, Wonderland has a queen. The Queen of Hearts. That's the family name, Heart. Like Windsor, yeah?"

Stephen let it go. "Alright. What does that have to do with anything?"

"She's a bit of a despot, you see," Connor explained. "More than that, she's really against letting the populace be. So, she brought in something. They call it tea, but it's not, really. Because real tea, proper tea is leaves and water and strainers. Tea like the Queen has made, that's a drug. There's a way to . . . to suck the emotions out of people. Out of Oysters, rather."

"Oysters?" Stephen asked with foreboding. A poem drifted through his mind. _Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, we can begin to feed._

"That's what we, they, call people from Earth," Connor said, confirming Stephen's worst fear. "I don't know how it works, just that there's a lot of machinery up at the casino to do it."

"But, how does . . ." Stephen's mind raced, putting together pieces. "Do you mean they make . . . condensed . . . I don't know . . . happiness?" he asked.

He was dismayed when Connor nodded. "That's exactly what they do. They have some way to steal Oyster emotions and turn them into a liquid. Think about it. Having a bad day? You can take a shot of Serenity. Having trouble getting it up for your girl? A dose of Lust."

"It's a drug," Stephen said in horror. "She's drugging her people?"

"Exactly," Connor said. "Most people are addicted. You can see why. Who wants to feel sad or angry or any sort of bad thing? But more than that, regular happiness or what-all doesn't cut it anymore. Because Tea is perfectly undiluted Happiness in a bottle. After all, even the best time in the world has some bits that make it less than perfect. Best Guy Fawkes Day fireworks display and you still might be cold or have work the next day, yeah?" Then Connor frowned. "You're taking this awfully well."

"I just saw you run _through_ a door, fell through an anomaly filled with playing cards, teacups and clock faces and have spent most of the last year chasing after dinosaurs," Stephen said. "I think the regular bounds of credulity have been pushed further with me."

"Ah," Connor said. "Well, then I'll tell you a little more. See, all Wonderlanders have a sort of magic skill. Some are born able to speed read, my brother, David, if he hit you with his right hand, it was like being clocked with a sledgehammer. Me, I can make Rabbit Holes."

"Rabbit holes?" Stephen asked. He could make a guess from context, but this was all weird enough it was worth checking. "What is a Rabbit Hole?"

"Sort of a wormhole," Connor explained. "Fast trip from one place or another."

"That's how you got through the door," Stephen said, thinking hard. "And how you got us here."

"Yup." Connor popped the 'p'. "But there's a bit of a problem."

"You can't get us back?" Stephen hazarded.

Connor winced. "Well . . . it's more like the bigger, longer the Rabbit Hole, the harder it is to control. And the further I get from Wonderland, the harder they are to control. Pulling an Oyster . . . human . . . nonWonderlander through also messes with the things."

"Getting us home involves all three," Stephen said. "So, do you need something? Some sort of . . . mystical widget?"

"Cheshire knows I wish it were that easy," Connor said. "Mostly I just need to have a lot of time to really concentrate, be well-rested and not be interrupted. Even then we'll be lucky to wind up in the London environs and not in France or Ireland."

Stephen winced himself. "I assume this means we're not going anywhere until tomorrow morning?"

"Not unless you want to risk landing in Tulgey Wood or a firefight in Afghanistan," Connor said wryly. "And it could go either way. Oysters queer my aim enough to wind up anywhere. As it is I'll have to cling to you the whole way to make sure we come out at the same place."

That was potentially embarrassing, but Stephen had lived through enough dangerous situations to know that he'd rather be humiliated and alive, than dead but reputation intact. "So, do you suppose there's something we could find to eat?" he asked.

Connor frowned, then said, "What've you got in your pockets? 'Cause it looks like the owner of this Tea Shop's not going to be back a while." He started digging through cupboards, producing fruits and vegetables, taking some things out of what seemed to be a fridge from the early '50s. "I figure we can leave a few things here and he can trade 'em for some good stuff. Because this'll all go bad if it's left, but it's rare enough, well, he's probably pretty good at wheeling and dealing to have stuff as fancy as this."

When he held up a bag of apples, Stephen winced. You knew it was bad in an area when common foodstuffs like apples were treated as some sort of delicacy. "Let me see," he temporised. He had a lighter, because you never knew when you'd need to start a fire. Some change, a Swiss army knife and a handful of bullets. Connor pursed his lips and seemed to be thinking. "The bullets, definitely. Ammunition can be pretty dear. The knife . . . oo! It's one of the ones with a sawblade? That could get talked up really nice. And a lighter? Stephen? Do you have some seer in your family? Because it's like you packed ready to trade for this trip."

Connor was digging through things and came up with a revolver. "Hmm. Forget the bullets," he said. Then carefully loaded the six into the gun. "You'd probably better keep-" He stopped dead, staring at the gun in his hands, flipping it around and looking it over. "Dad," he said softly as he fingered a nick in the handle. "Take care of this," he said as he handed the gun to Stephen. "I know Dormie woulda taken all our stuff. I can't really begrudge him doing it, but this was my dad's."

Not bothering to try to get Connor to carry it, Stephen just slipped the gun into his waistband, safety on, and nodded. Connor was getting to be a better shot, but between the two of them, it made more sense for Stephen to have it. They settled to splitting up the food, Connor nipping downstairs to share with the man he'd called 'Dormie', then they settled in for the night.

* * *

David had been having a very bad couple of days. Being shot by Dodo, chased by Mad March, going on the run, running all over Wonderland to avoid being killed, Charlie the White Knight, way more time at the Casino than anyone sane'd want and that Bloody Jack Heart.

Cheshire knew it was all Alice's fault. Bloody Alice with her bloody blue eyes and brown hair and fighting skills that had to be like a Wonderlander's Gift and that sexy short blue dress she made look effing amazing when she was all wet.

Cat curse the girl!

David had tried his best to get Alice away from the suits, but the best efforts of a gun, his fist and her Gift (Judo? Right. This was clearly a Gift), they still were outnumbered. As the world went dark his last thoughts were of Alice and Connor. _I'm sorry_, he thought. Not sure which one he meant it for.

* * *

The next morning Stephen woke up, stretching and idly thinking he was getting too old for camping out the way he had in his early twenties. Connor was sprawled out on the grass of the office, and wasn't that the strangest notion to wake up to. The short man called Dormie was there a moment later. "That's odd," he commented. "Hatter's a bit of an early riser."

It had been years since Connor had lived in . . . Wonderland . . . Stephen made himself think the word. But then, it was a hard thing to change first impressions. "I wouldn't know," Stephen told him with a shrug. "I haven't exactly been in a position to know."

"And you are?" Dormie asked.

"Stephen Hart," he replied, and watched as the man's eyes went wide in shock and horror. "You're _what_?" the midget asked, sounding a little terrified. "He's brought back a Heart? First it's Oysters, now it's Hearts, next thing he'll have the Queen over and we'll all lose our heads!"

Too late Stephen remembered Connor's statement the night before that the royal family name was Heart. "I'm not related," he said hastily. "And it's Hart as in a deer, not as in a card."

His panic coming to a halt, Dormie turned to stare at Stephen. "Not one of the Hearts?"

"Not in the least," Stephen assured him.

"Don't do that," Dormie said, staggering off back down the stairs. "I know Hatter spends his time with some odd sorts, but really. Cheshire knows I don't need that sort of stress. I need a dose of Serenity after that." He headed down the stairs mumbling about needing to find a dealer and collect their stock.

Connor had woken finally and was watching his friend thump down the stairs with a vaguely affectionate smile on his face. "Dormie could sleep through most things," he said, "But he's a good friend." He stood and stretched. "Right. After breakfast I'm going to try to open up a Rabbit Hole to home."

They idly conversed while Connor puttered around making tea and some strange concoction of berries Stephen suspected were entirely native and a porridge that sounded like it had emerged right from Lewis Carroll together, sprinkled it liberally with honey and handed it over. It was a strange collision of sharp cheese, berries and a sort of corn meal pudding. Finally they were done and Connor leaned on the desk, staring at the air in the middle of the room. Slowly a spot of light formed, then turned into a crack, then what looked like a hole in the air. Brightly coloured objects, many of which Stephen vaguely associated with Alice in Wonderland, could be seen, circling around and around. Moving to stand behind Connor, he could see it now looked like it was a tunnel to somewhere.

Suddenly Connor said, his voice strained. "That's it." Then he took Stephen's hand, holding on with bruising force. Stephen winced, but decided he didn't want to risk breaking Connor's concentration, and that since Connor was the expert, better that he let Connor take the lead.

Just as they crossed the threshold, a commotion at the door caught their attention. A bunch of men in suits burst into the room, shouting and pointing at them. Connor's eyes were wide, but it was too late, and Stephen felt himself get ripped out of Connor's grasp, and suddenly he was falling without any sense of where he was going, and knowing that he was probably going to wind up very far from Connor. There was a sudden sideways wrench, and he was spat out with tremendous force.

Staggering to his feet, he was left with a sinking feeling as he saw more men in the same sort of suits as had distracted Connor back at the strange tea shop. There was also a man in a weird white, silver and plastic outfit and a huge mirror. It all added up to his being lost in this strange place that, if Connor were right, used people like him as some sort of drug source.

"Where'd that Oyster come from?" shouted one.

"I don't know! The White Rabbit didn't say anyone was supposed to come through yet, the raiding parties aren't due back for another half hour!"

It was confusion, and Stephen tried to bolt, but there were too many and he found himself tackled, heard someone shout something about compliance and calm. Something was sprayed on his face, and before he knew it, he was calm. Couldn't think of a reason to struggle. Why struggle? They shone a light at him, then pulled him along, periodically hitting him with some sort of spray until they had dragged him into a small room. Then everything got very pleasant and very fuzzy.

His last clear thought was a vague wondering of why he didn't have his shoes anymore.

* * *

The damn suits had come bursting in, and Connor lost his grip on the Rabbit Hole, Stephen and everything else as he fell through. Worse yet, the bloody suits had followed him in. "Catch him!" the six in the lead shouted.

_Cat help me_, he prayed as he twisted the Rabbit hole hard, sending them all spiralling off. They came out of the Rabbit Hole in a mess of arms and legs. Connor scrambling to his feet saw the suits pulling themselves up. "You! Stop!" one shouted.

"Really?" he asked. "When does that ever work? I mean, what sort of an idiot's going to let the Queen's suits take them in?"

"It's the Hatter!" shouted one, "Bring him in!"

A roar brought them all to a halt and a jabberwock came flopping out of the woods. "Huh," Connor said, "Tulgey. Good to know where you are, after all." As the 'wock lunged, the suits scattered. Connor laughed and spun up a Rabbit Hole. "Cat's luck to you!" he called, and was about to hop in when he thought of the look on Abby's face or Stephen's or Cutter's if he'd just left them all to die at the buck-toothed mouth of a 'wock. Shaking his head he opened the Rabbit Hole up underneath their feet before they could scatter a second time and sent them up into a tree. They'd be safe up there until the 'wock lost interest, and then they could make their way home. Meanwhile, Connor needed to get back and see if he couldn't trace where Stephen had wound up. With any luck, he'd be back home getting yelled at by Cutter.

As he slid towards the tea shop, Connor smiled wryly. The more outrageous your Gift, the more likely you'd have Cheshire's luck. The spirit of Wonderland itself, the Cheshire tended to be a very old school chaos spirit, a little like Coyote or Loki. Lots of really good luck, lots of really bad and very little between. with the bits of good luck since he and Stephen had arrived in Wonderland suggested a high chance of it all turning soon.

He came back out in the phone booth down the way from the Tea shop and froze. The whole place was swarming with suits and some bloke with a ceramic rabbit head. A moment later he felt his heart nearly stop as he realised it was Mad March. What had happened to his _head_? Connor shook his own head and hurried off, hoping they wouldn't follow him. The last of the Hatters being captured, especially the one that made Rabbit Holes would be enough of a coup that the Queen would never let him go.

"Hatter?"

His concentration at tracing the path of the Rabbit Hole Stephen had vanished down was shattered. A smelly, filthy, slimy-looking man with long hair and an ugly assortment of rain gear was standing there. "Yeah?" Connor asked, wondering who the hell this was.

"Look, I'm sorry about the whole thing with Mad March, but I needed the Tea, you know? Summat to trade."

This was unbelievable. Pure luck of the worst sort. "Whatever," he said, turning his back on the stinky undercity-dweller.

"Come on, I'm just Ratty," he said, as though that was supposed to mean something.

Connor glared. "Just go away, would you?"

"I brought you Alice, didn't I?" asked the clearly delusional rodent-man.

"Alice," Connor muttered in aggravation. "Bloody hell." He turned to the other man. "Go away." He'd finally found the end point and opened up a Rabbit Hole, only to discover it was right next to the Mirror and surrounded by suits and scientists. "Cat on a hot tin roof," he muttered. The Wonderland woman who'd masqueraded as his mum back on Earth had taken to using the phrase. It'd taken years to train himself out of using Wonderlander curses, and being home was just bringing it right back.

In any event, he now had a pretty damned good idea of where he'd find Stephen.

The Queen's Casino.

* * *

Connor had once been bloody stupid enough to break into the Queen's casino on a dare. He hadn't known his way around and had been lucky he'd opened the Rabbit Hole up in a blind corner with no one in it. Pure Cheshire's luck it'd been.

A week later his whole family had been dead. Not for any fault of his own, but that was just how Cheshire's luck ran. Something really good, something really bad.

Now that old bit of luck was lucky again, because it meant he knew a bit of the inside. Not a lot, but enough that he could land up there out of sight, combine a few things in the Tea shop closet and his own regular clothes and have a bit of camouflage. He wouldn't really pass for a suit, but at least no one'd look at him twice out of the corner of their eyes in the halls. Soon enough he was ready and spun up his way into the casino.

Hair slicked down, black jacket on white shirt and all, he hurried through the corridors, trying to look like he was there for a reason, comfortable and had somewhere to be. Hurrying through the halls, he looked at the signs, smiling a little at the abstract symbology that made sense to a Wonderlander but would have an Oyster asking why they couldn't just have an arrow, names and numbers there. A hopping white rabbit and plate of oysters pointed the way to the White Rabbit lunchroom.

A pearl and a happy face looking to the left pointed the way to the section where they sucked the emotions out of Oysters. Connor tried to keep his breath even, tried to look casual as he walked towards the start of the Tea factory. Glancing with faux casual interest into the actual casino room, he saw that Stephen wasn't in there. But there were other places he could be. Emotions they pulled out that weren't right for a casino.

Two scantily clad Diamond girls ambled past, giggling. "They want him drained of Lust before they put him onto the casino floor," the blonde said. "He's very handsome-"

"For an Oyster," said her brunette friend.

"Oh, not just for an Oyster. He's more handsome than the Prince," the blonde informed her friend lasciviously. "This is _not_ a hardship assignment, trust me. Blue eyes, all long and lanky and muscled . . . mmmm. I don't even need a dose of Lust for him, believe you me."

"Sometimes you've got such Cat's luck," the brunette grumbled.

As they parted ways, Connor sighed and followed the blonde. Because if Stephen wound up anywhere, wouldn't it just be in the Lust room, being petted by a hot blonde. His guess was right, as a slow meander past the room showed him a smirking redhead passing off her shift of inducing Lust to the brunette, and Stephen was looking very . . . acquiescent in that room.

He was about to try sneaking out when suddenly the hall was emptied, shift changes having ended. Connor took a deep breath. He wouldn't have a better chance than this, and scattered as he was, better not to try shoving Stephen through a Rabbit Hole right then, because Connor would be distracted and Stephen wasn't going to be all there for a good few minutes after Connor got him out. So, he let impulse carry him through and burst in. With a swing that would have made David (or Abby) proud, he knocked the girl out and off of Stephen, then dragged his teammate out of the room and started hauling him down the corridor, hoping to find a quiet corner for Stephen to recover in. At least enough to get him acting some other way than a space cadet with too much Lust in his system. A quick glance back and Connor winced. Those trousers could _not_ be comfortable right about then. Way too tight.

"Where are my shoes?" Stephen mumbled.

"Not here," Connor told him. "We'll find you some more. Later."

* * *

Stephen stumbled along as he was towed behind Connor. He struggled to make sense of the dreamscape he was in. Because a minute ago there'd been girls, lots of really hot girls, and it had been pretty brilliant, even if they were teasing a lot. Warm and soft and perfumed, he'd been enjoying himself. And suddenly the world had gone cold and hard and Connor was there, which didn't really make sense, because Connor wasn't the sort who'd interrupt a bloke when he was alone with a girl.

Also, his feet were cold as he was towed along. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.

"I told you, we'll get you more," Connor snapped.

This was distinctly less nice than the girls in the room.

Connor suddenly pushed him into the wall. "Shush," he muttered. From the recess he'd been pushed into, he could see a bunch of people walking by in a crowd, including a girl he thought he recognised from the room. With a frown, he noted that everyone else had shoes. His feet were cold. "Where are my shoes?" he asked.

"Outside," Connor said, a weird note in his voice. Like he was tired of answering the question and was distracted.

A thought was trying to solidify in Stephen's head, but it was so hard to think past the lust those girls had been so set on inducing . . . something about that skittered through his head, and Stephen tried to latch onto the thought and make sense of what was going on. Connor was pulling him along again when a loud announcement shattered his thought processes. "Would the Fives, Sixes, Sevens and Eights of Clubs please report to the third level," came a voice over a PA system.

It had the effect of snapping Stephen back to reality. _Clubs, lust, girls with diamond patterns, Wonderland!_ "Connor? Where are we?" he asked.

Connor shot him a considering look. "We're in the Queen's Casino and I'm trying to break you out. You back with me yet? Or are you going to keep asking about your shoes?"

"I assume we're not going to try one of your anomalies home right now," Stephen murmured.

"No," Connor told him. "It's not like I can concentrate on much of anything but getting out and not getting caught right now."

"Fair enough," Stephen said. Then he glanced down. His feet were bare and terribly cold on the linoleum floor. "Where _are_ my shoes, anyhow?"

"No idea," Connor told him blithely. "I guess they suck feelings out through your feet, because I've yet to see an Oyster around here with shoes."

And then suddenly they were spotted. "It's the Hatter!" shouted a man in a suit with a numeral four and a club on the lapel. "He's escaped from Dee and Dum!"

"Cheshire's luck!" Connor said in a tone that suggested he was cursing. Then they ran, hurtling through the halls, and Stephen found himself being wrenched through a wall or two, Connor looking paler with each transit. They were momentarily safe, and Stephen pulled Connor to a halt. "Breathe, Connor. Take a minute. You look like hell," he said. It was true. The geek was sweating and shivering and clinging to the wall behind him to stay upright.

"Of all the Cat cursed . . ." Connor trailed off. "It's just so hard, Stephen."

"Take it easy and we'll figure a way out," Stephen reassured him. He was surprised to find that he still had the gun. He supposed that people who were drugged up to the gills were probably compliant enough that it wasn't worth bothering to check them for weapons because they wouldn't think to use them. "What happened to you, anyhow?" he asked.

Connor took a deep breath and frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Well, they said Hatter had escaped from somewhere," Stephen pointed out. "You said that's your name, so unless you've got a twin around . . . what?"

But Connor was suddenly wild-eyed. "Hatter . . ." he murmured. "But Dodo said that . . . he wouldn't . . . but maybe, times being what they were . . . that'd mean . . . We have to find him!"

"Who?" Stephen asked, perplexed.

"Maybe I'm wrong," Connor told him. "But I wasn't being held by anyone. I just broke in. Which means there's someone here that looks like me being held." The look in his eyes when he glanced back at Stephen was so hopeful it almost hurt to look. "But I did once have a twin brother. I thought he was dead."

Following the cryptic signs, and Stephen wondered what a cartoon thinking bubble and a stick could possibly indicate to Connor that would make him take a turn down that hall. "Why don't you people use words and numbers?" he muttered.

"Why should we?" Connor asked, sounding far too amused. "It's obvious that's leading to the rooms where they dig through people's minds."

"With a stick?" Stephen asked.

"That's a cattle prod," Connor told him.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.

* * *

David could feel his grip on reality slipping, the lava lamp he was trapped inside with Dee and Dum just adding to the disorientation that came from too little sleep, too much pain and the judicious application of electricity to the point where it had sort of stopped hurting because it had passed beyond pain into something else.

There was a commotion at the other side of the room, and suddenly a door popped open. Dee and Dum were shot away, and that was when he _knew_ he'd started chasing the Cheshire. "David! Cheshire, tell me you've not gone mad."

"Clearly I have," he replied. "'Cause Conn? You're not real. You're dead."

"I'm not," the hallucination with his brother's face said. "Dodo lied to me. He said _you_ were dead."

"You look like a suit," David pointed out.

Connor, or his hallucination, sighed and started tugging the straps that held David down. "I had to break in, yeah? What was I supposed to do? Wear Dad's purple hat with the green ribbon and the matching jacket Mum bought?"

"Can't wear the jacket," David muttered. "Alice has it."

"Alice?" Connor's voice was amused. "Of Legend?"

A voice interrupted them. It was an Oyster, in a dull grey shirt, no shoes and holding a very familiar gun. "Can we get him out and then argue about who's not real later?"

It was the surreality of everything that convinced David it had to be real. Because he could never have come up with this and neither could the Queen's goons. "Connor? Little brother?"

And then he had his arms around the twin he'd thought he'd never see again. "Cheshire, you're alright!"

"Five minutes," Connor muttered into his collarbone, sounding like he was going to cry. "Five minutes and you're always rabbiting on about being older."

"Should I start trying to find a pair of shoes?" asked the Oyster.

Connor pulled away and shot an amused look at the man. "Now you're just being obnoxious," he told him. "David, this is Stephen, Stephen, my brother David."

"Now we just have to find Alice," David said urgently. The girl hadn't the common sense of a bucket of gravel, but she had a way about her.

Hissing, Connor said in surprise, "There's actually an Alice?"

Whimsically, Stephen the Oyster said, "Why shouldn't there be?"

"You're not going to get all literary on me now, are you?" Connor asked the man. "By the way, I can't wait to try to explain to Cutter how you got a tattoo."

"Yes, there's an Alice," David said, "And I'm pretty sure the Queen's got her around here somewhere."

"Hatter." Came a mechanical voice behind them.

They turned and David shoved Connor behind him. He didn't know where his brother had been all these years, but he wasn't going to lose him to March. "Hello, Marchie. Looks like I'm not going to continue enjoying your hospitality."

"I should have known you'd wriggle out of it," March said. "Well, you're going to be more trouble than you're worth." He turned, clearly about to call the guards, when Connor snatched the gun from his Oyster friend and shot March.

"You always had the worst taste in friends, David," he said.

The Oyster stared. "You killed him?"

"He was already dead," David hastened to reassure the man. "The Queen had him brought back. Still don't know how she did it. Most people don't come back from beheading."

The man had that same sort of bewilderment in his eyes as Alice seemed to have all the time, but he recovered. "Connor, you've got to remember to hold your stance when you're shooting. You don't have the arm strength to do that. You're lucky the recoil didn't twist your aim off completely."

"You and Cutter can scold me later. Where do you think they'd take your Alice?" Connor asked.

"I'm never going to get shoes, am I?" asked Stephen the Oyster.

Connor laughed. "You're really just trying to annoy me aren't you?"

"Call it revenge," the man said.

"This way," David told them, and led the way to the noisy upset that was sure to be Alice's fault. It seemed like it always was. They'd get Alice, get out, and then he and Connor had a score to settle with Dodo's lying arse.

* * *

They hurried down the hall and Stephen asked Connor's brother, who looked like a harder and wilder-haired version of Connor, "Do you know where we're going to find her?"

"Based on past experience and the other time I've had to break her out of here, not to mention her general predilections, wherever the most trouble is, that's where we'll find her." The man paused as they came to an exit from the maze of corridors into the main body of the building to see a bunch of the men in suits and one in a silly hat banging on some doors. "And that'll be it," he said, nodding at the crowd shouting about the girl and the casino.

"We'd best head to the back entrance," Connor said, turning away to go back into the halls again.

Stephen glanced at Connor. "You seem to know an awful lot about this place."

"There's always a back entrance in Wonderland," he was informed in a chorus.

He grinned. "That's going to drive Cutter mad," he told them as he followed them along and David stole someone else's gun. "Trade?" Stephen offered then, willing to hand over a sentimental piece in favour of something he wouldn't feel bad about losing.

"Eh?" said Connor's brother. Then he saw the gun. "Where'd you get that?"

"The Tea shop," Connor supplied. "Were you in business with Dormie? In retrospect he must've thought I was you."

David looked stricken a moment. "You saw the shop?"

Connor seemed to know what his brother was thinking. "You did what you had to do, David," he said. "It's not been easy, I know."

David shook the moment off, taking back his father's gun, giving Stephen the other one. "Let's go, then," he said.

Coming around the corner, there was, indeed, a back entrance into the room which looked like a bizarre sort of imitation of a casino. There were roulette tables, craps tables, all sorts of gaming tables that didn't require anyone to actually think. Well, actually, there _was_ a blackjack table, but as the dealers and whatnot kept on working, Stephen was able to see that the odds were stacked in favour of the players. Momentarily confused, he suddenly recalled being stuck in a small room with attractive women, saw the bare feet all over, and understood. It was designed to keep people happy, and the high of winning at a casino was probably as good a generator of happiness as anything else. Certainly easier to maintain long-term than a lot of things.

There was also an attractive young woman in a blue dress, purple jacket and high heeled boots being threatened by two of the armed suits. David was already over there, offering a sharp whistle to get their attention. He took advantage of the momentary distraction to knock one out, then the girl, Alice Stephen presumed, knocked the other one's gun down quickly, providing an opening for David to knock that one out too. "Hatter! You're okay!" she said.

David took the time to check on the clip and things with his gun, a move Stephen heartily approved of, when she gasped in horror over the damage that had been done to him. "Oh, it's a few cuts and bruises," he started to say, "I'm fine," when she flung herself at him.

"I thought you were dead," she said, wrapping herself around him.

"As much as I want to be bitterly jealous of you right now," Connor commented, "Can we get out of here?"

The couple turned and she looked between them, back and forth. "This is my little brother-"

"Twin brother," Connor interrupted. "Five minutes is not enough to make a difference, David,"

"Can we go?" Stephen asked, deeply uncomfortable as he looked at the people glazed over with the life being slowly sucked out of them. "Come back and rescue everyone once we've found some sort of backup? And maybe shoes?"

"No," she said. "Hatter, I'm sorry I didn't trust you before, but I have an idea. Do you see any more suits in here?"

"No," the twins chorused. "Why?"

"I have an idea. Let's seal the room," she ordered.

* * *

When David started to do as he was told, Connor glanced between him and the Alice girl. "You sure?" he said, not even sure if he was addressing her or his brother.

Stephen was a little more on point. "You really think we can get them out now?" he asked.

She looked him over, taking in his bare feet and tattoo, and said. "I'm sure."

"It's really not like you not to leap on the save everyone bandwagon," Stephen said to Connor as he joined David in blocking the doors.

"I've lived in fear of being caught by the Queen my whole life," Connor retorted. "It's not the same. And I don't know these people. I know you and David."

"But you're willing to chase after a smilodon with no back up and a rifle?"

Connor flushed. "That was just a man in a costume," he protested.

Stephen raised an eyebrow at him. "You didn't know that, did you?" he said. "You're a bit of an idiot, Connor, but you've never been a coward."

David and Alice were having a consultation by the doors when suddenly Alice dashed onto the stage that had so recently had a bunch of go-go dancers on it. She had David's gun and she fired a shot into the ceiling. Connor wasn't even aware of the soft bark of laughter that escaped as he said absentmindedly, "She really is an Alice."

"I thought you were in love with Abby?" Stephen commented. Connor shot him a dirty look.

David fired off a few shots himself. "Oi!" he shouted.

"Right then," Connor said, and started circling the room.

"What are you doing?" Stephen asked.

Finding a panel, Connor cracked it open, looking it over. "Seeing if I can find the machinery for pulling emotions around here. There's got to be something."

"See if you can find me some shoes while you're at it," Stephen told him. Connor flipped him a single finger in reply.

"Deal another hand, spin another roulette wheel and it will be your last!" shouted Alice.

Connor looked through it, starting to tug wires and follow connections. "Not this one. Just the electrics," he muttered.

"Where's security?" said a panicked-looking Diamond girl.

"Clearly not coming," Stephen offered. "Don't I remember you from that room you had me in?"

"Oh," she said, looking as though she was about to start flirting.

That was just . . . "Really? I know all the girls think you're the prettiest thing ever," Connor grumbled at Stephen, "But can you try not to flirt with the enemy _right now_?"

"Hey! Everyone, wake up!" Alice said.

Connor found another panel and cracked it open. There was tubing in that, with different colours. "Tea," Connor murmured. "Getting warmer." He started looking around the floor, hoping to find another panel that might give him a better chance to figure out what was going on, how all the mechanics worked.

"This isn't a dream, this is really happening," continued the brunette on the small stage. The Oysters were still all unresponsive, possibly sucked dry, Connor didn't know. But Alice wasn't giving up, David wasn't leaving without her and Connor wasn't leaving his brother alone. "Look at me. Think," she continued, despair starting to creep into her voice. Connor poked at someone, seeing one man start to move a little. Maybe a newer recruit. But as he watched, the man's feet stayed glued to the floor. Another poke and he saw he was right. The fact that the man's feet weren't coming off at all just ratcheted up the urgency to find a way to get the people loose.

Stephen was circling around, trying to shake awake a few around the edges who seemed more responsive. For a moment, his bare feet contacted a section of the floor and he glazed over before wrenching himself away and staggering a moment. "Alright there, Stephen?"

"I think," said the tracker.

"Where are your families? Your kids?" asked Alice. That finally got a response. A few people began to wake properly. "Your husbands and your wives," Alice continued, having seen this tack was working. "And your mothers and your fathers," she continued.

A police officer was feeling up and down his shirt, and the voice was so unexpected as he asked, "Where'd I leave my keys?" that it was as loud as Alice's.

"You were taken from them, and brought here," Alice said, looking hopeful and determined as the people started waking up. Connor redoubled his efforts to find a hatch.

Stephen muttered something about shoes as he carefully avoided the sections of panel meant to draw emotions, circling around with the gun.

"Try to think," Alice continued.

"Tough for some people," Connor grumbled as he found the catch under a table. The Diamond tried to stomp on his hand, and Connor glared at her. "Oh, it's you," he said recognising her. "Cut that out Penny."

"It's Peony," she hissed. "You cut it out, Hatter."

"Your name," Alice was ignoring the byplay on the floor. "What's your name?" she demanded, suddenly focusing on a bloke by the craps table.

"Taylor," the man responded. Suddenly he paused. "No. That's my son," he said, eyes widening in surprise. "My son," he said. Something seemed to have clicked.

With her new momentum, Alice ordered, "Look down at your feet! Try to walk away from the tables!"

A black woman with the largest hairdo Connor had ever seen was tugging on her legs. "Stuck," she said. "I can't move my feet!"

Shoving Peony away, Connor yanked open the floor and found something. "Hang on," he muttered. Just about . . . there! "Got it!" he said. One of the people at the table pulled away, slowly, as if moving through treacle. "One down, everyone else to go," he sighed.

Alice turned to some who were more far gone. "Wake up!" she shouted at them.

"David!" he called. "Give me a hand here!"

* * *

David hurried over, dropping down next to his brother, who was expertly messing around with the wires under the table as he tried to free the Oysters. He was getting them clear one at a time, but it wasn't fast enough. "Can you pry up some more of these panels?" Connor asked. "I just don't know enough about the mechanics to risk shorting this out."

"But you could from here?" he asked, impressed.

Stephen the Oyster snorted. "Please, he could probably free everyone from that one panel if given enough time. Sadly, he's something of a genius."

"Can I get that in writing for the next time Abby says I'm stupid?" Connor asked his Oyster friend.

"Who's Abby?" David asked as he pried up parts of flooring. Connor made a satisfied noise and messed around for a second or two. It abruptly freed everyone at that table.

So, Stephen answered. "Connor's roommate that he's trying to convince to date him."

"Really?" David grinned. "She pretty?"

"Gorgeous," Connor said with a sigh. "And she thinks I'm a complete prat."

"That's because you are," Stephen told him with a brief grin. "Don't think Abby hasn't told me all about your blackmailing her over Rex."

That was a bit funny actually. "Blackmail little brother? Tisk tisk, I need to show you how to use your . . . assets."

Connor was under the next table, muttering. "Cat curse it!"

"What's wrong?" Stephen asked.

His twin poked his head back out. "They must be taking something different at this table than the last one. The connections're all different."

Someone was starting to make headway against the doors and Alice, who had been stunning and riveting and pretty sexy while she was at it, kept up the pressure on the Oysters. "They're trying to get in, and do you know why? It's because they don't want you to wake up!"

The suits came bursting in along with the Club in the lead. Alice leapt off the stage, taking cover to shoot at them, Stephen the Oyster was also behind a table, taking a couple really magnificent shots. It made you wonder if everyone in Oyster land had Gifts as well. He'd never seen anyone shoot like Stephen before. Connor was ignoring the chaos, scrabbling away and freeing another batch of Oysters who hit the floor, trying to get out of the line of fire.

David vaulted off his perch in a move that was pretty impressive if he did say so himself, ignored Connor's "Showoff," and started moving to Alice's side. And then a man in a dull, pastel yellow jacket with the sleeves mostly cut off came in.

"Stop," he ordered the suits. "You're scaring the Oysters."

He saw several of them bristle at being treated like upset livestock. Connor had ducked out of sight of the door, working away under another table. But Alice, upon seeing the man, stood up, starting to breathe sharply, sounding like she might be suppressing sobs, standing where anyone could shoot her and aiming the gun at him. David crept closer, wondering what was going on now, what Alice had got them all into with this latest stunt. "What do you want?" she demanded.

"Put the gun down."

"You stay right there." Her voice was trembling and Connor finally paused, looking up and between the pair of them.

"It's me Alice. It's your father."

"Bloody hell," Connor muttered, eyes wide. Stephen, next to him, kicked him. David resolved to thank the Oyster later for that. He didn't want Connor drawing attention to himself. Not now, not when he'd just got him back, not when he wanted to introduce him and Alice properly, not when . . . when everything, really.

"You don't remember me. You don't remember anything."

"I . . . I do. Thanks to you I remember everything," he said, wrapping a hand around the watch on his wrist. Cheshire's luck, another bloody revelation, and probably another trap.

Alice was looking a little mad herself as she informed her father, "I don't believe you. This is just another trick." She spoke louder, informing the Oysters, "You see this guy? He's the one who brought you here. He hooked you up, and when he's done with you, when he's done with you he'll get rid of you. Isn't that right? Daddy, isn't that right!"

Connor was edging towards her now, his eyes filled with tears, the compassion and sympathy David had got beat out of him early on spilling from his brother's eyes. A quick glance showed Stephen looking discomfited, but still paying more attention to the suits and their guns than anything else. He made his own way closer to Alice, something in him hurting with her. But somehow her father had remembered, told her a story from when she was a little girl about a dead cat and Alice seemed to believe him.

It was really touching as they hugged and all. And then one of the Queen's goons showed up, tried to shoot Alice, and Stephen reacted. Faster than anything David could've done (that man definitely had a Gift with guns), shot the other man before he could do anything. And then the building started to shake. There was an odd, shifting clunk and the Oysters were free, running. "Come on, Alice!" he shouted, grabbing her hand and dragging her away.

As they ran for the stairs to get out of the apparently collapsing building, he heard Connor shouting, "Really Stephen? I thought I was the one making bad jokes at inappropriate times! Enough with the shoes!"

* * *

They all came staggering out of the casino, Connor, Stephen, David, Alice and Alice's dad, hot on the heels of the fleeing casino workers, barefoot kidnap victims, suits and a heavyset redheaded woman. The casino fell apart behind them, collapsing in a fiery display of destruction. A safe distance away people came to a halt, chattering, trying to figure out what had happened. Listening to their voices, it became apparent that the people from Earth were all American.

In a move of Connor-level inappropriate timing, David turned to Alice and said, "Don't suppose I could get that hug now, yeah?"

"There! She's there! Get her!" shouted the redheaded woman. Connor stiffened, so Stephen shifted his now-worried attention to her. She was surrounded by the men in the card-themed suits, and a man in black robes and a silly club-themed hat was next to her.

The black policeman stepped between Alice and the oncoming suits, saying, "Touch the lady and I'll shuffle your deck."

"And you think _I've_ got a bad sense of humour?" Connor muttered to Stephen.

Stephen just sighed, readying the gun. What did it say about him that the police officer's statement was the strangest thing that had happened in the last forty-eight hours? Who talked like that, anyhow?

"Don't just stand there idiots," said the woman, "Arrest her!"

David was nervously shifting, looking ready to leap to Alice's defense, while Connor had a look in his eye like the other times Stephen had seen him make his weird magical anomalies. Alice sounded like she'd had enough though. "Take a good look at your queen first," she declared. "Make sure she's really worth fighting for."

At that, Stephen stopped and turned to stare at the woman. She was in what looked like a muumuu. She was fairly short, her hair in a style that harkened back to the 1960s or so, and was remarkably unintimidating for a monarch who had struck fear into the hearts of so many people, apparently. Of course, it was easy enough to be terrifying if you had the authority to do whatever you wanted, he supposed. Connor's eyes were on the suits, so Stephen turned his focus to them.

But the men in suits stopped and turned to look at the queen. Connor's eyes went wide and he glanced toward Alice, to the queen, to the suits, back to Alice again. Finally he tilted his head at his twin, who for a brief moment grinned, and mouthed, _Alice_, then shrugged. "What?" Stephen muttered.

"She's blocking the Queen's gift," Connor muttered, sounding stunned. "She's the real thing."

* * *

David saw that Connor's Oyster friend looked confused, but there wasn't time to figure out what it was that had confused the Oyster now. Oysters were awfully easy to confuse, after all. The whole way down Stephen-the-gun-Gifted-Oyster had expressed confusion over what the direction signs meant and the numbers of questions he rattled off to Connor made David wonder whether half the reason Alice had been so combative all the time had been that the Oyster world really made so little sense that they had to write on everything to get by.

His dad had once pointed out that if you spent too much time logicking, eventually you couldn't make any sense at all.

But here was the explanation of why Alice was Alice. The Queen, all the royals really, had a Gift for persuasion. They could tell you the moon was a lump of rock in the sky and you'd believe it, even though everyone knew it was bleu cheese. Really expensive to purchase even before the Queen had wrecked all of Wonderland, now the efforts to knock a bit off were simply entirely prohibitive. But Alice had stopped that in its tracks, and the suits were actually looking at the woman, seeing what sort of a petty tyrant she was.

"How dare you look at me," said the woman in the nightgown. "She's the one you should be looking at!"

Alice wasn't having any more of the Queen's ramblings than she'd had of David's attempts to convince her he wasn't a con man. "I'm not the problem," she told the Queen. "You are."

"Off with her head!" shouted the Queen.

Connor and Stephen both muffled snorts.

On consideration, it did sound rather silly from a woman in a nightdress.

"And it looks like everyone is waking up to that," Alice continued. With the Oysters behind her, she looked like the general of a very strange little Oyster army. David wondered about all the Oysters, how many of them were Gifted like Alice and Stephen and how many would take up a side if it all came down to a fight.

Their delightful monarch wasn't giving up yet. "Don't listen to her," she ordered her suits. "She's just an insolent girl!"

"No one is frightened of you anymore," Alice shot back. "You're just one of us now."

David saw the look on Connor's face as his brother mouthed, "One of who?" looking perplexed.

"This is my kingdom," gritted out the Queen. "And I am still queen."

Connor Rabbit Holed his way to David's side, spooking a few people, but everyone was so focused on the interchange between Alice and the Queen of Hearts, most didn't notice. "I'd forgot how silly everything here is," Connor murmured in his ear. "The House of Cards is in ruins and she's still trying to use her Gift?"

"Shush. Don't queer Alice's pitch," David grumbled at him.

"Look around. No one is listening," Alice told the Queen. "Your power is gone."

And then Jack Heart showed up, shoving his way through the crowd, poncey git. "Jack," said the Queen in relief. "Thank Heavens you're here. Get everyone to fall in line."

Jack blinked a moment and said in tones of disbelief, "Me? Didn't you sentence me to death?"

At that moment, from behind them all, Stephen made a sort of muffled squawking noise that seemed rather out of character for him.

* * *

Connor edged over to Stephen, because only he and David had noticed Stephen's sudden twitchiness. "What is it?" he muttered in Stephen's ear.

"Don't be so sensitive," the Queen said to the man with the platinum blond hair. "I was just doing my job. Come on now and rally the troops."

"We went to school together," Stephen said, sounding stunned. "People used to make cracks about it. Heart and Hart." He squinted at the man. "Although he didn't look like he'd fallen in a vat of peroxide back then."

"No. Mother, it's over."

Stephen shook his head. "I thought I knew his mother. She used to bring lemonade and biscuits to our football team's matches."

It was a sort of weird counterpoint to the coup going on.

"Wow," Connor said. "I know someone who used to play football with the Prince of Hearts."

"Wouldn't that be a jack of hearts?" Stephen asked.

Suppressing a laugh, Connor told him. "Now, that would just be stupid."

"The ring," Alice was saying to the Queen.

"Are you mad?" asked the redhead. "I'd sooner have you cut off my finger."

When Stephen gave Connor and inquiring look, Connor shrugged. It wasn't like he'd been in Wonderland for the past decade. He'd also only be fourteen when he left. How was he supposed to know everything? More to the point, how was he supposed to know what ring? "Maybe the Ring of Wonderland," he muttered, shrugging.

"That can be arranged," Alice retorted.

David, sounding rather cheerful, asked the Club in charge, "Do you have a knife?"

The Club produced a little knife and David, a determined look on his face, a hint of smirk around the edges, started toward her. Jack Heart stopped him. "Make sure it's a clean cut," he said. "We don't want to get blood on the ring."

"Mm-hmm," David replied. He never had a chance to do more than take another step before the Queen handed the ring over with a petulant look on her face that was no doubt meant to be a look of defiance. Then Alice held the ring up, everyone cheered at the end of the coup, and suddenly things really erupted into chaos.

Because Jack Heart had to send his mother to be locked up, someone had to start going through the Casino for the dead and for survivors, someone else had to cart the Oysters off to be sent home and Connor fought his way through the crowds to grab his brother. "So," Stephen said, "Once I get some shoes we can head back with everyone else and call Cutter from New York. At least being an illegally arrived foreign national will be better than dying in Leek's little menagerie."

"You're going?" David asked, sounding gutted. "I . . . don't you want to come with me to see Dodo? Find out why? Maybe use my fist on his head?"

Connor nodded. "You're right. Stephen," he said, turning to his teammate. "Look, when you get back to Oyster - Earth," he corrected himself, "Tell Cutter and the rest that I'll be along. I have to do this. I need to know why I thought my brother was dead all these years."

"So, Hatter," said Jack Heart, coming up behind them. "I . . . what?" he stopped, stunned as he took in two Hatters. Then he turned a little and spotted, "Stephen Hart? What? How?"

Stephen had a wry smile on his face. "Nice to see you again, Jack. Been a while. I have to admit, I like your fake mum better than the real one."

"She baked better biscuits too," Jack tacitly but absently agreed. "What the Cat's name is going on here?"

David smirked. "You wouldn't know him, but this's my twin brother, Connor Hatter," he told the soon-to-be King of Hearts.

"Since when do you associate with Hearts?" Connor asked his twin.

"What about you?" David demanded back.

"That's H-A-R-T, David," Connor said. "Stephen's just an Oyster."

"Who knows Jack Heart," David pointed out.

"That's not important," Stephen put in. "What I want to know, Connor, is why you think I'd just go tripping home while you go chasing after some character you blame for faking your brother's death."

Connor blinked at Stephen. "Because it's nothing to do with you?" he offered. He liked Stephen, they were friends and teammates, but it wasn't like the bond between Stephen and Cutter. Hell, most days Connor wasn't sure that Stephen even liked him. "I mean," he added hastily, "We're not mates. I get that. There's nothing here to do with . . ." he glanced around, and said, "With the ARC. I know I'm a bit of a useless prat a lot of the time, but . . ." he trailed off, shrugging. "You don't need to feel obligated, Stephen. Besides, I'm sure Cutter's worried about you-"

Which was when the tracker surprised him. "I thought were were, actually," he said, eyes locked on Connor. "With everything that happened, everything Cutter and I said to each other, the way Abby was, I'm not entirely sure you're not the only friend I've got left." He swallowed. "After I was such a complete idiot about Helen."

"You don't have to pretend to like me just because of Leek's stupid menagerie," Connor said a little more sharply than he'd planned. He was aware of Alice and David and Jack Heart all watching the interchange like a tennis match.

"Connor, if I didn't like you I wouldn't have tried to help you with Abby," Stephen told him, rolling his eyes. "Hasn't David ever harassed you about anything?"

A sudden memory of good-natured ribbing and David insisting that Connor was the ugly twin flickered in his mind's eye. "Oh," he said, slotting everything Stephen had ever said into a new mental paradigm. "I'm a bit out of practice. Mum - Winnie Temple, she had girls you know. It's totally different."

Then Stephen winced. "Sisters _are_ vicious," he agreed. "They never forget anything. Like girlfriends only much less fun."

"That's all worked out then?" David asked, glancing between them. "Stephen's hanging around a bit longer? At least until we find out why Dodo did it?"

"Yeah," Stephen said. "I am."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.

* * *

"Wait a minute," Alice interrupted. "Dodo? You want to talk to him again? The crazy guy who tried to kill me when I wouldn't just give him the ring?"

She'd been so caught up in her own personal drama, her dad and being in an alternate universe and Jack and everything else that she seemed to have missed something. Hatter turned to her. "See, when Connor and I were fourteen, the Queen decided she didn't much like us and our family. She sent the suits out and . . ." his voice broke and for the first time he really looked . . . lost. Hurt. She thought she might have seen that fourteen-year-old boy hiding behind the facade.

Connor, who clearly really _was_ Hatter's twin, said, "We both hid, but Mum and Dad, they . . . the suits killed them. We managed to get away, but we got separated."

Then Jack spoke. "The deaths of the Hatter family were . . . significant. It was symbolic, you know. Mother wanted to make sure no one brought up the old days, brought up the family that helped Alice of Legend to bring down the House of Cards before."

"So where does Dodo come into it?" she asked.

Hatter answered. "He was already part of the Resistance, yeah?" he said. "Dad had been part of it, made sure we knew to go to the Library if we needed help. That was where I went. When I got there, Dodo told me," he took a shaking breath at the memory, "He told me Connor was dead, that the suits had got him. Then he suggested that they could use me, use this," he held up the hand she knew could punch through concrete, "And offered me a place in it. I took it. I didn't have anywhere else to go."

Connor had a thousand yard stare as he said, "The same thing happened to me, sort of. I got to the Library and he said you'd been killed. Said that the last of the Hatters shouldn't stick around in Wonderland, especially one with my gift. It took a bit of doing, but Winnie Temple's husband had been taken in a raid for trying to teach some children to read-"

Alice heard herself and that Stephen guy make similar noises of disbelief. Jack shot them sardonic looks. "You didn't think that Mother wouldn't also stoop so low as to ensure that no one was literate?"

"No wonder there aren't any written signs around here," Stephen said.

It was a weird moment of solidarity when Jack, Hatter and Connor all rolled their eyes. "Oysters," they said.

"Anyhow," Connor continued, "Dodo arranged to send Winnie and me up to the Oyster world. Lucky we landed up where we did really. I didn't stand out nearly so much in Manchester as I might have in America, say."

Stephen nodded. "They would have thought you'd both just moved there from up north," he said.

"So, you want to find out why he lied to at least one of you about this," Alice said. It was fair. She was pretty pissed off with the Queen for kidnapping her father all those years ago, she'd probably be even angrier if someone she'd trusted had taken him away. Then suddenly something came to mind. She pinned Hatter with a glare. "So, Hatter's your last name, huh?"

"Yes," he said slowly. Then suddenly his eyes went wide. "Now, Alice-" he started.

"You're always there when they 'pass the hat'?" she demanded. He wasn't going to get out of this that easily.

* * *

As Alice harangued David about something he'd said to her when they first met, Stephen turned to Jack. "When you dropped off the face of the Earth, I had no idea that was a literal thing."

His old football teammate had a sheepish look on his face. "Mother knew she needed to be sure that I was literate, but since she didn't trust anyone, that meant I had to be educated away from here." He shook his head. "She never realised that sending me somewhere else, where I could see an entire world of literate people and all, that might have an effect."

"We lost that last championship game, you know," he informed Jack. "Without our best goalkeeper we were sunk."

Jack frowned. "How did you get here, anyhow?"

Connor spoke before Stephen could. "You'll forgive me, your highness, if I keep that to myself a bit. You know, until your mum's safely away somewhere she won't be using her Gift on unsuspecting suits?"

Eyeing Connor a moment, Jack nodded. "I hope you'll trust me enough to tell me eventually. Are you staying now?" he asked Connor.

Stephen held his breath. Because Connor had family here, he'd said himself that he had trouble using that magical anomaly-making skill of his on Earth, and the way Connor just seemed to fit there, he couldn't help but worry. But he couldn't say anything. It wouldn't be fair to Connor to try playing the card that everyone in the ARC was relying on him. Then Connor looked at Stephen and his lips quirked into a small smile. "No," he said. "I may choose to travel back and forth some, but I've got a life and home over there now." He glanced over to where David and Alice had started some sort of vaguely lovesick staring contest and added, "I'm not so sure David'll be staying here either."

Then someone flagged Jack from among the suits hanging about. "I don't suppose you'd consider writing," Jack said to Stephen. "It'll be nice to talk to someone who sees me as a friend for once." He glanced over at Alice himself. "And who's not an ex-girlfriend either."

"I'll see what I can do," he said. "You still a Chelsea fan?"

"Just because you have the poor taste to be a fan of Liverpool . . ." Jack said, trailing off suggestively. "Send me the league standings if nothing else, please?"

"I can do that," Stephen said with a grin. Then Jack left and Connor was looking back and forth between them, shaking his head in disbelief.

This whole situation was just so bloody weird, he thought. "So, do you have any idea where to find this . . . Dodo person?" he asked Connor.

Connor didn't answer, David did. "He'll be at the Great Library. It's where he's set up, where his part of the Resistance was set up."

* * *

Alice was less than enthused about that. "Oh my God," she grumbled as they made their way back. "Seriously? We're going back to the people who shot you and their stupid microbus elevator."

"Microbus elevator?" Stephen inquired. "A microbus as a lift, you mean?"

She frowned a moment, then said, "Yeah. Sorry. That whole American to British English thing strikes again."

Connor left the pair of them discussing comparative dialects and just how weird Wonderland was to talk to David. "What does she mean, shot you?" he asked his brother.

"I was fine," David said, waving a hand faux carelessly. "I had my bulletproof vest on and all."

Gaping, Connor hissed, "You need one to see him?"

"No," David said. "I just wear it all the time. Can't be too careful, you know."

It hurt to see how cynical and bitter and resigned David was. "Will you come back with us?" Connor wanted to know. "At least for a bit?"

"If nothing else, I want to meet this Abby of yours," David said. "What's she like?"

Abby he was always willing to talk about. "She's really brilliant. She's an expert in animal behaviour and her hobby's kickboxing."

"Kick boxing?" David asked, looking baffled. "How do you box with kicking? Isn't that all about punching people? Or do you mean boxing things with your feet? Wouldn't that cause some trouble with breaking the china?"

A glance showed him his brother was chopping logic out of confusion, not taking the mick. "It's a kind of fighting discipline," he explained. "Lots of punching and kicking. I've seen Abby kick some things into submission that'd amaze you."

"Are there a lot of Oysters with Gifts?" David asked him. "Because I've never seen anyone shoot like Stephen does, and Alice says she does something called Judo, but that's got to be a Gift-"

"It's not Gifts," Connor told his brother hastily. "It's just a whole bloody lot of Cat cursed hard work."

David looked at him sceptically. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Connor said. "Look. I was in your tea shop, yeah?"

"So?"

"I saw what you had in your storage cupboards," Connor told him. "Apples and meat and all sorts of things. You got that through trading, right?"

Tilting his head quizzically, David nodded. "Yeah, and?"

"You did a lot of trading, didn't you?" Connor pressed. "Lots and lots until you were able to trade a tiny bit of Serenity or Lust for a whole big bag of things, yeah?"

"And I had to wheel and deal for hours and hours every day . . ." David trailed off and turned to stare at the Oysters following them. "They work that hard at that?"

"Yeah," Connor told him. "Oh, sure, some are naturally more talented at some things than others, but I've yet to see a Gifted Oyster."

"Cheshire," David breathed.

* * *

The idea of someone having the time on their hands to perfect something like that Judo thing or to shoot like Stephen did was incredible. It wasn't that he couldn't understand someone wanted to get better at something like that, but didn't people have to spend time on things like getting food and paying off authorities and running shops and all sorts of things like that?

It seemed the Oyster world would take more getting used to than he'd thought.

Well, that was neither here nor there, he thought as they reached the door to get into the Library. Duck and Owl were all of a flutter. "Shouldn't you have someone a little less . . . erm . . . well, harder to intimidate than those two?" Connor asked doubtfully as they headed toward the lift.

"God, it really is a minibus," Stephen muttered. "I can't wait 'til we get home and the world's only insane some of the time."

David ignored the Oysters' solidarity about Wonderland's relative madness. "Unfortunately, most of the Resistance isn't so good with remembering the passwords." He shrugged. "Hopefully they can be proper librarians once Jack straightens things up and lets the Library go back to being the Library, but in the meantime there's only so many people Dodo trusts to handle the passwords and security."

"They've got Library-type Gifts?" Connor asked curiously.

"Owl remembers everything he's ever read and exactly where it is, Ducky there just always knows exactly where it is you can find what you're looking for."

The lift lurched, Alice looked queasy and Stephen muttered something about some trolley in someplace called Peru that he'd been on.

When they got off the four of them didn't even make it to Dodo's office. He was in the hall, and when he spotted them he stopped dead, a look of panic on his face. Before either David or Connor could think of asking a question, Dodo's mouth opened wide and a noise came out of it that sounded a little like a bird squawking, a siren and sticking your head into a blender. It hurt, and everyone staggered back, clutching at their heads, trying to block out what was apparently Dodo's Gift.

The man in black turned to try fleeing, and Stephen, with a kind of stoicism that David had to marvel at, managed to pull his hands away from his ears and shoot the fleeing Resistance cell leader. The sound stopped, thankfully, and David called to Stephen, "We owe you one, mate. You sure that isn't a Gift, Connor?"

"Nope," Connor told him. "Stephen's just a superhero." Then they closed in on Dodo, who was panting and clutching his shoulder. "You mind explaining why you lied to us ten years ago?" Connor asked.

"And why you split us up?" David added.

Dodo glared. "I'm not answering anything asked by someone who'd keep the Ring of Wonderland away from the Resistance, and then shoot me for no reason."

"You mean, the ring that was in _my_ possession that you didn't _explain_ why it was important?" Alice asked, coming over to stand over Dodo. "Then when I refused because you hadn't given me any reason to think I should hand my boyfriend's family heirloom over to you, you _shot_ Hatter?"

"And I have to say that I shot you because the moment you saw us you started making that appalling noise," Stephen added. "That was just to shut you up. I don't really see David and Connor having anything to do with either of these events."

David put on his most threatening smile, bringing every bit of nastiness he'd had to build up over the years just to survive in the Queen's Wonderland. "So, are you going to answer, or do I have to bring my Gift into things?"

He could almost see Connor looking at and discarding ideas of how to threaten Dodo. Then suddenly Connor's face melted into an eager sort of pure innocence. "You know, it's been so long since I've been able to really work at making Rabbit Holes, I'd love a chance to really practice at it," he said. He absently picked up a paperweight, tossing it into the air and letting it fall into the Rabbit Hole. A few second later the glass ball was hurtling at speed through the Rabbit Holes before suddenly flying sideways and shattering on a wall. "Oops," Connor said, looking about six years old and all the more terrifying for the eagerness on his face.

Dodo cracked. He always did when faced with someone more dangerous than he was. It was why he hid in his office. "Alright! I knew we couldn't risk letting the Queen get her hands on the Rabbit Holes," he said. Then he turned to David. "You, I figured you'd get yourself killed right quick and I could bring your brother back. But you kept on not dying, no matter how many times I leaked about you to March."

"What?" gasped Owl. "But Hatter always brought us nice fruit and veg," he said.

Duck added, "And the cheese. The cheese was nice. And the new books."

With a snap, Owl seemed to come on point, sharp intellect in his eyes. "Not to mention the best and most reliable information came from him. More useful than a hundred Rabbit Holes." He shot Connor an apologetic look. "Sorry."

"No problem," Connor waved him off. "I got no problems knowing that m'brother's smart."

Ignoring Connor, Duck said, "I'd been sure his Gift was finding information, like me, until I saw his sledgehammer that first time, too." The pair glared at their suddenly shrinking leader. "He wasn't anything but helpful and you wanted to give him to March?"

Alice was equally furious. "You were going to put Connor on a guilt trip to help, weren't you?" she demanded, almost growling. "Tell him that he owed you, so he had to help. But Hatter was too smart to die the way you wanted, and you couldn't bring Connor in until Hatter wasn't there for him to find out you lied."

Before they could do anything, Dodo tried to take a breath to start screaming his Gift again. Connor raised a hand and Dodo fell through the floor, out of the ceiling, into the floor, out of the ceiling, into the floor, faster and faster, around and around. "I think we'd best drop him off somewhere that someone can know he was planning to hand over his own agents," he said.

They all watched Dodo whirling around and around and Stephen said, "Maybe we could ask Jack. Might as well start applying to the official authorities, right? I mean, if he's going to be king or some such."

"He knows Caterpillar," Alice pointed out. "I get the feeling Caterpillar wouldn't be too happy about him doing that either."

"Take him to Jack, then?" Connor asked. "I'm pretty sure he's going to be out by the Mirror, sending Oysters back."

"Sounds like a plan," David said. He turned to Duck and Owl. "How's about you two take over the Library? I mean, it looks like the Queen's out and the new king was working with the Resistance. Worth seeing if maybe the Library can go back to what it was."

The pair smiled. "We will. Thanks for all the cheese, Hatter," Duck said.

Connor flicked a wrist and Dodo slowed, then went through the Rabbit Hole a last time. "David, you'd best go on ahead. Hold on tight to Alice, would you?"

"Are you sure about this, Connor?" Stephen asked, looking concerned. His brother was looking a little pale, David noted.

"Yeah," Connor told him. "We're not so far that it's a long way. Two out of three things that were a problem last time aren't anymore. Just, we've got to wait until they've got through before we go."

Stephen looked satisfied, but David made a note to ask, taking Alice's hand tightly as they walked into the passage to the Mirror and Jack Heart's startled face.

* * *

As they got spat out of the weird magic wormhole that Hatter's (David - it was weird to think of Hatter having a normal name) brother was able to somehow make, they were greeted by Jack looking pretty stunned and a bunch of other people looking everything from shocked to exasperated, hanging around a giant sci-fi-ish sort of mirror thing. Actually, it was the Earthlings who looked exasperated. Alice suspected that they'd been just about to be sent home and this had delayed it. However little, it was still a delay for all these people with homes and families waiting for them.

Including her father. "Dad," she said in relief as he approached her. Then she was wrapped up in a hug.

"Everything go alright, Jellybean?" he asked. He seemed to be overusing the nickname, but Alice had the feeling he was trying to make up for lost time and reassure her that he still remembered.

She smiled at him. "Yeah. Hat - _David_ and Connor found out why. It was pretty much that Dodo's a big jerk."

"Everyone's alright, though?" he asked, looking at Connor and Stephen as they shot out of the wormhole. Connor immediately sagged, looking exhausted, and Stephen half carried him to the side of the room, scolding from the look of them. The wormhole closed behind them.

Alice pursed her lips, glancing over to where Hatter - _David_ was talking to Jack, hands gesticulating, the clear cause of Jack's face darkening, "Maybe I'd better go check on Connor," she said. They headed over to where Connor was sitting indian-style on the floor, Stephen kneeling next to him, looking worried. "You okay?" she asked Connor.

"Fine," he mumbled.

"Not fine," Stephen contradicted. "You wore yourself out getting us away from the guards at the casino, and did you even get any rest at all between when you tried to get us home at first and when you came looking for me? Because you already looked like hell when you dragged me off," he scolded.

"It's not a big deal," Connor replied. "Really. I just need a bit of food and I'll be fine."

Her father eyed him. "You're short a lot of minerals and straight up carbohydrates, aren't you?" he asked. "You need a shot of sugar then a lot of red meat. Unless you're a vegetarian, but you need a pretty solid dose of iron in you, not to mention-"

Connor shook his head. "A bit of chocolate and I'll be fine. I'm not that hungry."

"Zinc, then," her father insisted. "If you've got a reduced appetite when you need all that, something's not right."

Stephen looked him over. "Are you a doctor?" he asked.

Her dad shook his head. "Just a PhD in biochem," he said. "Once we get back you can just . . . come . . ." he suddenly looked stricken. "Carol," he said. "What am I going to say? I just vanished for ten years."

"It wasn't your fault," Alice hurried to tell him. "You didn't remember. They didn't let you."

He shook his head. "That's not the point, Alice. What am I going to tell your mother? That I was kidnapped by a bunch of storybook characters?"

* * *

David pulled the new king aside. "I need to talk to you about the Great Library and Dodo."

"Dodo?" asked Jack Heart.

He suddenly realised that Jack probably hadn't had every in that The Hatter had with the Resistance. They couldn't have afforded to trust him with too much, simply because of his position. "Part of the Resistance hid in the Great Library," he explained. "The bloke in charge of it's Dodo." He took a deep breath to keep from bursting into a rant about what the bloody bird had taken from him. "Ten years ago, when your - the Queen ordered the . . . execution of-" he was horrified to hear his voice crack. But Connor and his sentimental looks, Alice's hunt for Jack and her dad, Stephen's good-natured insistence on helping them even though he was an Oyster and could have just headed home, it had all hammered at the armour he'd built up for himself.

Jack Heart looked . . . sympathetic. It was really pretty mimsy to see. "I'm sorry," he said. "I know it doesn't really mean anything, but I have to at least say it."

He shook it off. "Thanks, but you didn't do it." Then he focussed. "So, Conn and I were told, if we were ever in trouble to get to the Library for help. Dodo, he knew Conn's Gift was something the Queen'd want badly, so he sent Conn away, told him I was dead. When I got there, he told me Connor was dead. He tried to get me killed off so he could bring Conn back and use his Gift . . ." It made him so angry, because he'd trusted Dodo not to be planning his death from the start. He'd thought they were more or less on the same side and Dodo had just let some stupid idealism about what people had to do to get by get in the way of his relationship with David.

"You're joking," Jack said, looking baffled. "Even _I_ knew not to try bargaining with the last Hatter." He shook his head. "I'll see about speaking with Caterpillar about what to do about him. Politically, killing what everyone thought was the last of the Hatters was a stupid move, never mind the immorality of it all." Then he looked earnestly at him. "Hatter, I know we got off on the wrong foot, and I'm sorry about that. I knew I couldn't bargain around you so I took a different tack." He shook his head. "What I'm trying to say is, can I ask you to help me? I need someone to negotiate with the Resistance cells that Caterpillar only has a nominal hold on. I need someone who knows the City from the bottom up, who knows the Teaheads and-"

David shook his own head. "No. Maybe . . . maybe sometime, Heart. But Connor and Alice both live in the Oyster world. I want to see my brother again. I'd like to know why Alice and Stephen are so mimsy about how things work here. And I'm tired of being the one who's always there when they pass the hat."

Eyeing him a moment, Jack suddenly grabbed a passing suit. "The Hatter wants to set up in the Oyster world. At least for a while. As a reward for his service to Wonderland, I want the White Rabbit to assist him with this. Collect the field package for him." The suit nodded, hurrying off. "You'll need that for settling into the Oyster world," he told David. "They don't bargain there, for the most part. At least in the places Alice and Connor are likely to be. In most of those places, the price of the item's the price of the item. There's also a bit of a pamphlet, just for some quick explanations of things so you don't look like a Teahead in the casino." He shrugged. "Alice and Connor," he paused, "And Stephen too, probably, they'll help you more, but if you find that you have to go out to buy something on your own without them there, you won't have too many surprises."

David nodded. "Thanks." Glancing back, he suddenly saw Connor looking pale and shocky, Alice and her dad looking worried and Stephen looking back and forth between them, like there might be two crises happening at once. "Gotta go, Majesty. Sorry to have delayed sending the Oysters home and all."

He hurried off, vaguely aware of Jack starting the Mirror up and sending Oysters through. When he caught up to the others, Alice and her dad were rabbiting on about what to say to Alice's mum when they couldn't tell the woman the truth, but would have to give her some story to explain why the man hadn't come home to his wife for a decade.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own Alice 2009 and I don't own Primeval, and if there's anything else anyone recognises, well, I don't own that either.

* * *

Stephen was thinking quickly, concerned about the way that Connor's condition had so suddenly deteriorated. "We need to get you something to eat, Connor," he said. Then he looked at Alice. "I know you're worried about your mum's reaction, but Connor's been wearing himself out for a while now."

She looked concerned, but nodded. "We'll just have to ask Jack if we can line jump."

David arrived then. "Conn? What's wrong?"

"I don't feel so good," Connor admitted, looking dazed, pale, possibly greenish, then lost his balance while already sitting to slump heavily against Stephen.

"Connor!" David shoved Stephen away, panic on his face as he cradled his brother close to him.

"We need a doctor," Stephen said, about to grab Jack and demand his old friend help.

Alice's father grabbed Stephen's arm. "Don't. There isn't anything like a decent comprehensive healthcare system here," he said. "I know you Brits have your NHS thing, but they don't even have the kinds of facilities you'd find in third world countries here. It's a lot closer to field medicine and mediaeval barbering. If you find someone with a healing Gift, you're golden, but between the Wonderland way of looking at things and the Queen's obsession with controlling the population, they're about two hundred years behind the times when you find someone who could be called a doctor."

"Then we definitely need to line jump," Alice said. She was on her feet and heading for Jack. A few quick words and people were clearing out of the way.

"I'm sorry," Alice was saying to the people pressed away from the magic mirror.

The police officer who'd made that terrible joke earlier about shuffling someone's deck shook his head. "It's a medical emergency, not something stupid. Don't worry about it."

It took a few tries and a lot of reassurance from Alice and Jack before David let them carry his brother to the mirror. They went through, the three from Earth being practically hurled from the mirror at the far end, Stephen barely managing to cushion Alice, rolling with her, while her father skidded into a wall. Connor and David came out easily, but Connor sagged to the floor. "Dad!" Alice shouted, hurling herself at her father.

"I'm okay," the man groaned. "Worry about your friend."

"Do you have a mobile?" Stephen demanded of her.

"A mobile what?" she asked.

"A phone!" he half shouted, aware that the panic was making him a little overly tense.

She fumbled it out of a pocket, his shouting seeming to shake her out of her own panic. She dialled, then started to describe the situation. "Thank God we found shoes," Stephen muttered, looking around the construction there.

In a short time there were sirens and paramedics and Connor was being loaded into an ambulance, Alice's father, who had broken an arm on his landing after all, was to follow in another. "What the hell were you folks doing in here?" demanded the woman taking down Connor's medical information as best Stephen could recall it.

Working at the ARC had made the answer to questions he couldn't answer reflexive. "I'm sorry, that's classified."

"By who?" demanded the woman. "'Cause you don't sound American."

"The Home Office in Britain," Stephen told her smoothly. Inspiration made him add, "Dr. Hamilton and both Connor and David Temple have become involved in our project and unfortunately I cannot answer any questions about the specific circumstances under which their medical issues occurred. Once we get to the hospital I'll have to call my superiors." He handed over the ID card that had the Home Office numbers and what-all.

It got him a sceptical look, but apparently his ID and Connor's were sufficient to convince her that they might be MI5 or some such, and he sat with David in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, had to half sit on the man when he got belligerent over his brother being taken for a few tests and played secret agent man any time someone looked like they might make Dr. Hamilton try to explain his ten-year disappearance.

* * *

Things were awfully blurry for a while for Connor. He was vaguely aware of Stephen half holding him up, of saying something about feeling sick to David before suddenly being nearly in his brother's lap. That was sort of nice in that he'd really missed David and they'd had no time to really hang out and be brothers again yet, but it was sort of really unmanly and Stephen was probably planning to take the mick about it.

There was a sense of moving, of going through a Rabbit Hole, but not one of _his_, which made him feel all weird and out of control.

It all just sort of faded in and out. Sirens, an ambulance, Stephen and David and paramedics. When the world came back into focus a moment he was in something that looked like an A&amp;E, but something was off. He couldn't put a finger on why it was off. American voices. That was it. Why were there so many Americans about?

Finally he faded back in for real. He was lying on a trolley, an IV in his arm, Stephen pacing around having a low-voiced argument with a doctor while David looked on anxiously and Alice and her dad just looked confused. "David? Stephen?" he asked, hearing his voice crack a bit. He cleared it.

"Conn, you're alright!" David looked relieved.

Stephen glared at him. "Next time, don't say you're fine when you're not."

"What he said," David agreed with Stephen.

"You don't need to mother hen me," Connor grumbled. "Have you called Lester yet?"

An arrested look on his face, Stephen said, "No."

Connor rolled his eyes and reached into a pocket, finding his mobile still there, still okay, and winced at the thought of the international roaming charges he was about to accumulate. He dialled the private line that would get them Lester. "James Lester," came the crisp tones of the administrator.

"Hey, Lester. Erm . . . Stephen and me, we might need a bit of a rescue."

"Connor?" Lester sounded stunned. "Where are you?"

"Just a sec," he told the man. "Where are we?"

"New York Presbyterian Emerge," Alice answered.

Connor frowned. "Where?"

She blinked, then said, "The Columbia University Medical Center emergency room."

"Right," Connor repeated the information to Lester.

There was a very long pause. "How on God's green earth did you and Hart wind up in New York City?" Lester asked.

Stephen snatched the phone from Connor's hand. "Lester, we've got a bit of a problem here, because when we came out of the anomaly-" Stephen stopped. Lester was probably being nasty during that pause. "Yes, there was an anomaly." Another pause, during which he shot a sidelong look at Connor. "I don't know what Cutter saw, but Connor and I wound up going through an anomaly. We've picked up a few people on the way." During this pause, Connor could just about picture the look on Lester's face. It was very sour. "Well, it seems that Connor and his mum wound up in a witness protection sort of thing not long after his twin brother vanished through an anomaly."

"That's creative," Connor commented idly. Stephen poked him in the side and gave him a warning look.

"Well, don't you think it explains his unusually creative view of the world?" Stephen asked Lester in response to something Connor would bet had to do with the convenience of their producing a twin brother from nothing. "Well, unless you want to tell me that Helen's made a clone of Connor for some reason-" He was cut off again. "Yes, I did say a few. Dr. Hamilton vanished ten years ago, and his daughter went looking for him." Alice and her dad both suddenly snapped to attention. "Well, he can hardly tell his wife and colleagues that he went through a magic portal in time, can he?"

"Portal in time?" Alice asked. Connor hastily shushed her. If Lester heard that he might get suspicious.

Stephen suddenly relaxed. "Yes, Dr. Hamilton. He said he's a biochemist. We don't have one of those - I specialise in microbiology, Lester, it's not the same thing at all, and just because Connor can moonlight doesn't mean that he shouldn't be allowed to focus on something, even if it's just tinkering."

"I hate biochem," Connor grumbled. "I'm not too happy about all the geomagnetics either, but biochem's way worse."

David looked confused, and Connor realised he had a lot of explaining to do for his brother.

"So, you get someone out here so we can get home, bring along all the confidentiality agreements, and you can always offer Dr. Hamilton a job while you're at it," Stephen was finishing up. "Great," he said. "Especially since I think they're starting to think I'm lying when I say I work for the Home Office." Another pause, Stephen's face looked stricken a moment, then he said, "I thought you weren't going to allow Cutter to dictate to you." There was a last pause and Stephen said hoarsely, "Thank you." Then he hung up.

Alice was the first to speak. "Magic portal in time?" she repeated.

* * *

Stephen seemed to freeze before Connor sighed and said, "David, do us a favour and make sure no one's listening?"

He poked his head out from the curtains, then came back in to sit beside his twin. Connor had some sort of weird Oyster needle in a vein, a long plastic tube attached to a bag of something he'd been assured wasn't _just_ water, and a bunch of other things stuck onto him all over, making a weird machine beep and make wiggly coloured lines. It was reading his heartbeat, that much David could tell, but the rest of it, he wasn't so sure of. Stephen, Alice and Alice's dad had been very calm about it, in fact they'd become a lot _more_ calm once Connor'd been attached to the machines, so he had to trust them the machines were good things.

"No one's about," he assured Connor, setting up with a crack in the curtain so he could see if someone approached.

"Right," Connor said, then took a deep breath. "We're sort of violating the confidentiality agreements we signed with the Home Office to do this, but it'll give you," he nodded at Alice's dad, "A sort of official excuse for where you've been. Or at least, our boss'll provide you with paperwork to back you up."

Alice cut in, "Magic portal in time," she declared. "I need an explanation."

"Basically, not many people know, and we sort of found out by accident, but the Earth's magnetic field produces these random anomalies that lead to different times," Connor explained.

Breaking into the explanation, Stephen said, "We've seen animals come through from the Permian, raptors from the Cretaceous, a pteranodon in London . . ." he trailed off with a shrug. "All sorts of animals from all over prehistory and some that we think may have come from the future."

"And these magnetic anomalies literally transport you through time?" Alice's dad, he really was going to have to find out the man's name, asked.

Connor nodded. "Absolutely. Thing is, right after we found out, this government bloke was right there, and the next thing we know it's all a big classified conspiracy."

Far more interesting in practicalities, Alice said, "So, you're going to suggest that Dad . . . fell into one of these?"

"They open and close essentially at random," Stephen explained. "There's no telling, yet anyhow, when one will open or when one will close. If your father walked into one, fell into one, got pushed, it could have immediately closed behind him, leaving him stranded in . . . whenever. And while he might have found another one, it's almost guaranteed that next one wouldn't have led back home."

Alice's dad nodded. "So, I've been trying to get home through these . . . anomalies for years. Your government will basically come up with some sort of cover-up to let me go back to my normal life?"

"Lester should," Connor said. He turned to Alice. "We'll just say that you fell into one that opened in New York and ran across your dad then. Along with me'n Stephen and David."

Finally David spoke up. "So, we'll be telling everyone what exactly?"

"That when we were fourteen you went missing," Connor said. "That me and Mum, Winnie Temple, we thought you'd died, yeah?" Then he shot Stephen an exasperated look. "Then we tell them that the reason my name's been Temple all this time was because me and Mum saw someone get killed we shouldn't've and we had to hide."

That was all a bit strange. "Seems complicated," David said doubtfully.

"There's a lot that's written down in Oysterland," Connor said with a shrug. "Nearly everything gets recorded somewhere. And if they can't find where you got writ down, they get all weird and mistrustful and mimsy about it. If you don't give 'em a reason for you not being written down, well, lots of trouble happens."

* * *

While Connor explained to his brother about birth certificates, citizenships, passports, taxes, census numbers, social security numbers (or whatever they called them in England), driver's licenses and all the other identifications that Alice had always taken as completely obvious things you did to verify someone wasn't pretending to be someone they weren't, Alice and her father pinned Stephen down, demanding details about what sorts of things they should have seen.

Jabberwockies seemed to be a good starting point, her dad adding in details of other Wonderlandian creatures he'd seen, both of them getting their stories straight about the bizarre future they'd be telling Stephen's boss about.

"I have to call Mom," she realized aloud. "God, she'll think I was kidnapped or something. She'll freak out."

"You can't tell her anything yet," Stephen told her. "Look, we've got to get you and your dad organized and whatever excuse Lester fobs everyone off with before you can tell her anything."

She sighed, but he was right about that. Right now there were too many holes in her dad's story that they couldn't explain to her mom. "I guess you're right." Then she looked over at Hatter - David. He looked a little shellshocked. "Hatter? David? You okay?"

"You're looking mimsy," Connor said. "Your eyes look like they're about to start dancing on stalks."

"I'm not a tove," grumbled the wild-haired twin. "It's just . . . no wonder you kept not believing anything I said," he told Alice, shaking his head. "No one here believes anything if it's not writ down six different ways and another one on alternate Tuesdays."

Her dad laughed. "That's the truth. I mean, for some people a handshake's as good as a contract, but they're few and far between."

David just looked perplexed by it all. "I hope the White Rabbit catches up to us with that package Jack promised," he said.

Connor's cell phone rang and he answered it, frowning. "Hello?"

* * *

Stephen could hear the sound of Cutter's voice from where he was, even if he couldn't make out the words. Nick's strident tones were unmistakeable. "Connor?" he asked.

"Yeah, Stephen's here," Connor assured him. Suddenly he looked shifty. "I don't know what you're talking about, Professor, I got in through the back."

That explained it. Nick wasn't going to accept the line about Connor's magical ability to walk through walls, or closed doors as the case may be, and was trying to get an explanation out of Connor. The geek winced. "Really, professor, you must have been overreacting or seeing something or sommat like that." He looked relieved when Nick apparently let up for the moment. There was another pause, then he turned to Stephen. "Cutter wants to talk to you."

He found himself shaking as he took the mobile from Connor. "Nick?" he said hesitantly.

"Are you alright?" his friend demanded.

"I'm fine," Stephen assured him. "Connor pushed me through that anomaly barely in time, but . . . yes. I'm fine."

Nick seemed to let out a breath he'd been holding. "I don't suppose you could explain how the hell he ran through that door?" he asked.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Stephen dissembled. "He got in when I wasn't looking through one of the side doors behind the animals." Before Nick could reply, he blurted out, "I'm sorry."

"What?"

His boss, team leader, supervisor and best friend was sometimes all-too predictable, but their friendship hadn't been through anything like this before. There wasn't a precedent, save that Stephen knew Nick was unforgiving of personal errors like the one he'd made. "Helen," he said by way of explanation. "I shouldn't have listened . . ." he shook his head. "No, I simply should have known better. I was an idiot. Back then and now. It's just . . ." he trailed off. It was indefensible.

"Stephen," Nick's voice was rough. "I should apologise. I was so angry that I didn't think. I didn't think about Helen's part in things and I didn't think about you."

"Nick-"

"You know me better than anyone, Stephen," he said. "I'm as much at fault for throwing that all away as you are. I just should have known what Helen was doing. She was my wife."

The response was habit. Years of friendly ribbing had him saying before he thought, "How could you have known, Nick? You never understand women."

Silence. For a moment he was terrified Nick would let him know that the joke wasn't welcome, that _he_ wasn't welcome anymore, then a soft snort came down the line. "I don't think I've ever denied that, Stephen."

As he started to smile, it felt strange. Mostly because these past few weeks, days, ever since Helen had ripped his friendship with Nick to pieces, the camaraderie and laughter they'd shared had become rare and strained. "Well, then maybe we could agree that we were both wrong and try to put it behind us?" he asked. "No offense to Connor, but he's not the sort I'd ever be best mates with."

Connor waved a forgiving and dismissive hand at him, chattering away at his brother a mile a minute. "I'd like that. I'll need support when Lester produces the new captain for the SFs he's been threatening us with."

Suddenly Connor's mobile started beeping, declaring that he'd overspent his regular contract account and would have to pay extra for the charges being racked up on the international call. "Nick, Connor's mobile's just run out, I think. I'll talk to you soon," he said hastily. The snippy female voice in his ear telling him he wasn't getting anything else out of the phone.

Connor made a face as the mobile was handed back to him. "I wasn't exactly set up for overseas roaming," he said wryly. "That's going to cost."

"Charge it to Lester," Stephen suggested, feeling incredibly carefree. Nick had forgiven him, Connor had risked himself to rescue the tracker and Lester had agreed to let Stephen back in. It was as though all the things that had been falling apart since Helen's reappearance were finally mending.

* * *

They'd talked for hours, him and David, but eventually Connor had fallen asleep. Despite what he'd said to everyone, he was still tired and there was a security to sleeping in the Oyster world that couldn't be matched, mostly because he could pretty much rely on no one coming to drag him off to be dragged before the Queen of Hearts and beheaded. He woke from a sound sleep to a shout. "Connor!"

"Abby?" he mumbled, confused. He just barely got his eyes open and focused before she was on him, kissing him.

"Don't ever do that again!" she shouted the moment their lips separated.

Stephen's amused voice came from behind them. "I think you're offering mixed signals, Abby," he said.

"No, I'm not," she denied. "You're an idiot Connor, and you're not doing that again."

"I'll bet he'd do whatever you asked him to if you keep on kissing him," David declared, mischievously. Abby turned and got her first look at him. She blinked. "David Hatter, at your service," he said, sweeping into a bow.

She hadn't let go of Connor's hand yet. He smiled and didn't bring it to her attention. "Abby, this is my brother, David. He went missing when we were fourteen, and it looks like it was through an anomaly."

She blinked at his twin, then seemed to utterly dismiss him. "Why are you in hospital?" she demanded. "Is this like that time you got a concussion and didn't tell me until I found you vomiting in the loo in the middle of the night?"

"Really?" Stephen asked. "So, this wasn't a one-time event, you're just generally prone to underestimating just how badly you've been injured?"

Abby snorted. "Only when it's important. When he stubs a toe he's just a big girl."

"Temple," Cutter's voice cut through the moment. "Stephen," he said.

There was a long pause as the team looked at each other, then Stephen offered up, "I'm sorry."

Then Abby let go of Connor's hand and flung herself at Stephen. "Missed you," she mumbled. When she backed away, Cutter stepped up to Stephen and pulled his longtime friend into a hug.

When they stepped back they stared at each other, and Connor could have sworn they were communicating telepathically. Then Cutter nodded, Stephen nodded, and it was like the whole world suddenly untilted itself from a change in axis he'd become so used to he hadn't realised it was that wrong. Cutter turned to them now, saying, "Lester's got a private plane from the minister and we're to take you back to London in it, then to the ARC."

It was a little longer than that for them to grab a nurse, get Connor unhooked from various machines and released, but eventually they left, heading for the airport, the plane that was yet another example of Lester's terrifying powers of bureaucratic magic, and home.

* * *

"You're _where_!?" Alice winced, then winced again as heads around the room turned to look at where Carol Hamilton's voice was audible to all and sundry as she shrieked at her daughter through the phone lines.

"London," Alice said sheepishly.

Her mother's voice sounded just a tad pleading as she said, "You don't happen to mean London, Ohio, do you?"

"There's a London in Ohio?" Alice couldn't help but ask.

A sigh. "Why are you in England?"

"There's a . . . thing. A classified thing," Alice said. "I kind of ran into it when I went after Jack."

"Jack?" her mother sounded perplexed.

"He was being kidnapped," Alice explained. "And then after I got him away I found out that he's engaged to D . . . someone, and . . . anyhow, I can't really talk about it," she finished, well aware of how completely inadequate the explanation was.

"Alice."

"I found Daddy," she blurted out.

There was a clatter that sounded like her mother dropping the phone, a few seconds of indistinguishable noises that might have been her mother sobbing, screaming into a pillow or doing some unholy religious ritual that, between Wonderland and temporal anomalies, Alice wasn't so sure wasn't an option anymore. These days she had to think twice before believing in six impossible things before breakfast. "Robert?" her mother said into the line, her voice trembling.

"There was . . . the British government classified it," Alice said. "But there were . . . terrorists and . . . I should let Daddy explain," she said.

She heard her mother say, "He's there?" but her dad yanked the phone away from her.

"Carol?" he said. There was a pause, then Alice, embarrassed at the look on her father's face, edged away to give him some privacy as he told his wife the story that Mr. Lester had constructed for him to explain his absence for so many years. She headed to the lab where she knew Connor had been helping David get used to the so-called Oyster world. When she got there, the woman that Connor had a crush on and lived with, Abby, was taking David through the basics of how to use a computer while Connor pouted off to the side.

Having seen Connor hacking with his laptop, digging through government files like it was child's play, she suspected, "Got too technical for him, didja?"

"I just wanted-"

"Conn," David interrupted, "I get that you've perfected the ability to dig through this computer security and suchlike, but I'm not you." He smiled at Abby, who flushed, and Alice felt a sudden unreasonable surge of jealousy.

She stifled it, but not before the words slipped out. "So, Connor said you're a pretty good kickboxer."

"Junior national champion three years running," Abby replied. "How come?"

Now that she'd started she'd be damned if she wimped out now. She might look like a jealous shrew, but better to go all out than to look like a wimpy jealous shrew. "I teach competition Judo back home. I was wondering if you maybe wanted to spar sometime. I don't often get to see what it's like against another style."

Abby eyed her a moment, then grinned. "Sounds like a plan. Maybe once I'm sure David here's got the basics down we could toss the SFs out off the practice mats."

* * *

The more he saw of the Oyster world, the more bewildered he felt. David stared around at people who did jobs he didn't think anyone'd ever be needing to do, and here people could devote their whole lives to looking into what it was a particular animal ate or building weird gadgets to tell you how to get places. He still didn't know exactly what a 'sat-nav' was, only that it was a little thing in Connor's girl's car that spoke like a girl version of the rabbit-headed March and told you how to get places. It was actually sort of disturbing.

Now, Alice had challenged Conn's Abby to a sparring match and David wasn't looking forward to seeing the nice blonde girl have her arse handed to her by Alice's not-Gift. But as they settled in to watch, a bunch of the not-suits that were called SFs, the ones that worked with Connor as opposed to the not-suits that Alice called the police, they began to make bets. Alice's dad, Robert he reminded himself, was naturally betting on Alice while Connor shot David an apologetic look and bet on Abby.

"Not to worry," he said, trying to hide his uneasiness about the whole production. "Abby's your girl. You could hardly go betting against her."

Connor shot him a sharp look. "No need to worry about Alice," he said. "I'm sure Abby'll be nice to her."

Stephen showed up with that Oyster that was his best friend. David was still pretty leery about that one and the Lester one. They were both very sharp and he had the feeling that if he slipped up a moment they could be in for a world of hurt.

"Jack dropped me a line," he told David as he dropped to the bench beside the twins. "He's got that package he promised you." He smiled. "Actually, he wanted to know if you wanted to meet up for a night out at a pub some time."

"Oh?" he asked, trying to ignore Alice doing some very interesting stretches out on the floor and Connor leering amiably at her. "Connor, stop trying to annoy me by looking at my girl. You've got one of your own."

"He doesn't," said Cutter with a shrug. "Unless something's changed drastically, isn't she still playing 'c'mere, go away'?"

Connor made an irritated sound while David agreed to meet up with Jack, because the Heart monarch would probably be the sanest person David would meet for a very long time. At least until he acclimated to the strangeness that was the Oyster world.

Then the match started and David shook his head all over again at the kind of work Oysters were putting into things that had nothing to do with getting enough food to get by or anything else important. Because while Alice was grabbing and kicking and ducking and throwing once or twice, Abby was punching and kicking and jumping and it was utterly different from what Alice did.

The match was a draw and David looked down at the fist he was so proud of. This was all going to take some getting used to.

* * *

Stephen was comfortably sprawled in a deck chair in Nick's back yard, watching the Hatter twins and Alice and Abby run around like lunatics playing some sort of game David had played with Connor when they were younger. It was one part wordplay and one part tag. As much as he liked Connor better, owed him his life and understood the other man loads better than he had before, Nick was his best friend. "Oh to still be young enough to get away with acting that much the idiot," he said to Nick, grinning.

"Don't point it out," Nick told him with a sigh. "As much as I like dealing with Connor, God knows the lad's brilliant, but sometimes it's like he's from somewhere else entirely."

From Nick's other side, Robert joined in, "I realise it may just be from being lost in time, but I feel that way about Alice all the time." The two scientists had formed a subtle sort of pact to resist any and all efforts Lester put into controlling them and Stephen very much liked the other man. Robert's wife had appeared less than twenty-four hours after Alice had called her, and following the tearful reunion the pair hadn't stopped acting like newlyweds for a moment. In fact, Carol and Jenny both emerged from inside the house bearing a tray of pastries apiece, one of which was snatched away by the ravening group of twenty-somethings on the back lawn. "You don't have to play housewife," Robert told her as she settled onto a chair next to him.

Nick studiously ignored the loving pair as he plucked out one of each type of pastry with all deliberation while Jenny studiously ignored him to take what seemed like half of the chocolate ones. "Lester mentioned he'll be bringing in his new head of the SFs and security," Stephen said. "I was wondering if you wanted to get David to come by and inflict himself on the man in tandem with Connor. Worst case scenario and all that."

"You two are horrible," Carol said. "Please try to avoid doing anything that would screw things up for David and Alice. I don't want her first serious relationship to fall apart just as it's taking off."

"If we don't have him do it, Cutter will," Stephen told her, "And he's ornery enough to be worth five of David when he wants to be difficult and smug."

Nick eyed him. "So speaks the man who abandoned me in the rainforest for a date."

_Ah, Allison_. "That wasn't a date, Nick. That was some of the best sex I've ever had."

Jenny sighed and shook her head. "If you instigate an attempt at comparative sizes of anatomy, Stephen, I will find a way to make you _very_ uncomfortable."

* * *

David hadn't quite known what to make of Winnie Temple pretending to be his mum, but Connor watched as they negotiated out a way to act with each other that worked for them. David had slept on his and Abby's couch for a couple weeks at first, but after Dr. Hamilton had decided to stay with the ARC and her mother had moved to London, bringing her consulting business with her, David had started spending time with the pair, getting to be Carol's assistant. Alice had found a dojo to work at not long after, then a flat, then David had made the transition to living with her.

It was nice, this, having people to talk to about what he and Abby and everyone else did who weren't actually part of things. It was even better having his brother back.

He couldn't believe it. Ten years before he'd thought himself alone, squaring his shoulders before walking into the Oyster school. Now he had his brother, family and friends and a sort of safety he'd never have found in Wonderland.

"Are you daydreaming _now_?"

He turned back to his work, "Cutter, Action Man is coming."


End file.
